Dappan Koothu » phillum

Supremely Sublime Movies of 2011

maxdavinci — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:23:08 +0000

There may not have been too many posts on the blog this year but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been any bad movies this year. While other blogs/sites are compiling their lists of the best of the year, I’m here doing what I do best. You are wrong if you think I’m gonna list a few b-graders and get away, this list is for the duds that came out this year with large budgets,
a-list
stars &
megalomaniac directorslarge budgets, a-list stars & megalomaniac directors. It has not been easy to compile a list given the truckloads of shit that the Hindi movie industry has managed to churn out this year. I wish I could add a few Tamil and Telugu movies to this list, but then we’d be looking at a bottomless pit. In the interest of saving my fingers from being worn out typing furiously, this post covers only the Hindi releases of 2011. I’m not gonna rank any of these and you may find a few exclusions as well. However if you wish to add any, feel free to use the comments section. I was once asked as to why I do this, well someone has to do the dirty work and even bad movies need some recognition. Grab a bag of chips before you read further, as this is gonna be a long one.

Yamla Pagala Deewana: Any movie featuring a Deol(except Abhay) automatically makes it to this list. YPD is like Diwali, Eid and Christmas falling on the same day as the three Deols take Balle Balle comedy way too far. While their previous venture Apne was unintentionally funny, YPD is caught between inside jokes, slapstick situations and a so-called family being united after 30 years.Blame it on my low bhatinda-ness quotient that I failed to find it even remotely funny, but in that case this movie shouldn’t have made it to a screen outside punjab. Bad acting, crass and unfunny lines, forced tears and plenty of daaru & chicken kababs. If you find any of those to your liking then you’ll surely disagree.

Patiala House: Akshay Kumar probably thinks he is adored in UK & Canada. How else do you explain this sad excuse for a movie torn between racism and cricket. At first you think this is another one such movie where a bunch of bald white men beat up desis at the drop of a turban. Later you see someone trying to break into the English cricket team. Cliched lines, anti-gora sentiments, disillusioned NRI’s and amidst all that Aksha Kumar doing a bad Sreesanth impersonation. Nikhil Advani continues to disappoint yet somehow manages to work with some of the biggest names in the industry. Let us forget the ease with which Akshay gets into the English team, wrecks havoc in the international scene, fails badly in the final game owing to depression and then miraculously rips through wickets the moment he spots his father in the stadium. Ignore this & the racism piece, you’ll have a very nice 25min movie!

Thank You: Haha another Akshay Kumar film, would you believe if I told you I actually like him and have watched every movie of his. Three happily married womanizers are brought on track by a detective hired by their wives. Now where have you heard this before, pretty original ain’t it? How I wish it ended there, instead you have oodles of sentiment throw in the mix with one of the couples breaking up. The guy takes to drinking, the girl is about to get married, more tears, more senti songs and Akshay Kumar gets shot in the last scene. Unfortunately it doesn’t end even there, Akshay has a flashback involving a dead wife who took her own life suspecting her husband having an affair. Even a Malaika Arora item song fails to invoke any interest because the cacophonous music by Pritam kills your senses.

Haunted-3D: India’s first stereoscopic 3D film, hahahahaha whatay joke! Mahakshay Chakraborty as a hero, well we shall try not to laugh for that. Had they made a simple ramsay movie in 3D, it would have still been watchable. Vikram bhatt had other plans however, here we have a rapist who after getting killed, comes back as a ghost to continue the act. There’s more of this drivel when the victim commits suicide, the rapist ghost now goes after the victim ghost! Mimoh travels back in time to 1936 to stop the events and travels back to ensure the mansion is ghost-free. Watching all those wooden expressions in 3D is something I missed, but I bet they’d be worth the price of admission.

Ready: Don’t tell me how many millions the movie made, it is still a piece of shit even if Salman Khan manages to pull a string of pearls from his rear! A somewhat funny Telugu film is remade in Hindi and the parts that were the funniest are replaced with slapstick sequences. The seemingly witty lines are lost in translation and the movie is placed abroad for no reason. I wish there was a hat that zapped anees bazmee with electrical shocks, every time he came up with a chaddi joke or kids peeing on the faces of adults. I was surprised with how each and every joke made me groan, even school kids can come up with atleast one original joke that can make you smile. If that’s not it you have pritams music to give you a brainfreeze, he is so much better when he steals tunes.

Double Dhamaal: They could have shot the Jalebi Bai portion as a music video, released it in theatres and still would have been able to charge people half the ticket price to see it on the big screen. Instead they yanked javed Jaffery from the sets of boogie woogie and made him mouth some of the most horrible lines of the year. Dhamaal was bad, yet they made a sequel that makes rolling in the sewers a better way to spend 130mins. The template is pretty simple, foreign locales, cheap mimicry, taking potshots at other films, and item song and a gora villain. Whats worse is that, in the last scene the actors break the fourth wall to proclaim there will be a third installment!

Murder 2: I hope the Bhatts sell tickets to get a peek at their DVD collection, for I’ll be fist in line to prostrate at the temple of piracy! It’s come to a point where you no longer care to find out which movie they’ve ripped off this time. You have the standard bhatt set-pieces like steamy scenes, psychopath killers, good music and hotties for emraan hashmi to smooch. In most crime thrillers they atleast keep the identity of the killer hidden till the last reel, here you know that half way into the movie and are just waiting for the climax scene. I watched it for the music and the premise that involved a lot of steamy scenes, but when a killer wears make-up & castrates himself, you know its time to leave the cinema hall!

Aarakshan: How can a prakash jha movie starring Amitabh Bachchan make it to this list? It can if the second half of he movie has no co-relation to the first half and treads on a entirely different premise. While the first half is mildly gripping and briefly explores the caste divides that threaten the education system, the second half is a battle between two coaching classes. Casting Deepika Padukone & Saif Ali Khan in roles that require some degree of acting doesn’t help either. Neither of the two get to shed their clothes and thus taking away their single biggest selling point. The movie just drags with over-the-top acting, cliched lines and you seem to be bound to your seat until the moment hema malini appears and delivers a ‘All your base belong to us’ tirade.

Not a Love Story: It pains to put a RGV movie on this list, I’ve always felt I was one of the few who got his movies and the train of thought behind them. Riding on the popularity of a murder case, the movie was made withing 20 days and shot at the very same building where the heinous crime was committed. With a one-line plot you’d expect the story buildup, tight screen play and some well shot scenes to keep it afloat. Sadly none of that happens and all you have is the camera flirting with the thighs of Mahie Gill & peeking into her inner wear. It is time we pray that RGV keeps away from shaky camera stunts and makes movies that have atleast a one-page plot.

Mausam: Shahid Kapur is an IAF pilot, there that one sentence should be enough to drive you away. You see the movie is set during a time where there are not phonelines or even a postal system. How else do you explain the following. Boy meet girl at a friends wedding, next morning the girl leaves for kashmir & the dejected boy joins the IAF. Years later they again meet in scotland, but before the can exchange any contact info the boy leaves for a mission and the girl is left to cry this time. They finally meet in Ahemadabad during the riots where the boy with a paralyzed arm rescues a boy who they later adopt after getting married! Devoid of any logic whatsoever, this movie is long painful and the scenes where one yearns for the other will make you slit your wrists.

Rascals: David Dhawan has been reduced to a sorry shadow of his glorious days in the 90s. Things don’t look good the moment you name your lead characters Chetan & Bhagat so that you can run a few jokes using the popularity of a so-called author. The comedy was crude & harsh even by my standards and included starving orphans, handicapped people and blind-man jokes. The gags were not only boring, but were were picked from email forwards that stopped circulating since 1999. Taking potshots at Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies and ample skin show by the ladies still cannot salvage this sinking ship. Someone told me the movie was a desi version of dirty rotten scoundrels, had they stuck to it and made a scene-by-scene remake, it would have been a fun ride. Sadly we have to add bollywood masala and tadka to ruin everything.

Ra.One: The most expensive hindi film ever made backed by a media jamboree that involved some of the worst possible ways to promote a movie, had failure written all over it. SRK speaking weirdly accented hindi at a gaming conference full of foreign speakers, eating spaghetti with yoghurt because that’s what tamilians do! Chinese fighters named iskilee, uskilee & sabkilee are supposed to be funny, so is the scene with a security guard getting excited to see SRK’s pierced nipples. Then you have a widow who flirts with a cyborg that reminds her of her dead husband, in a very decently clad in a transparent red saree. Oh did I mention the whole premise of a movie revolves around a game character coming to life to kill a 12yr old who is unbeatable in the game?

Desi Boyz: Poor Akshay Kumar, I swear I didn’t mean to pick on him but it has been a torrid year for him. He took off his clothes along with John Abraham hoping the audiences would identify their real USP and forget that this is a movie not a calendar photoshoot. They even got Chitrangadha Singh and Deepika Padukone to smoulder on the screen but there is only so much skin you can show before people ask you for a plot and other movie ingredients. Lines laden with double entendre, gay jokes, professors who strip and a court scene where an escort hands over his card to a female judge making her squeal in joy, yes this is the kind of stuff that will land a movie in this list.

Rockstar: The pyaasa of this generation somebody said, no director has ever done justice to AR Rahmans tunes before another squealed. While I don’t hate ARRtards as they are affectionately called, I most certainly have a problem wen people seem to ignore the loose plot and retarded screenplay hiding behind an awesome soundtrack. The plot has more holes than a busy road dug up for metro/flyover work, Ranbir maintains a constipated look throughout the movie and yells in anger at the drop of a hat. Somewhere along the side you also have a dying girl whom the whole movie seems to revolve around.

Feel free to disagree and add your own, but this is my list of stinkers for the year 2011.

(Images Courtesy: glamsham)

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Review: Desi Boyz – Chitrangadha Singh is a wooomaaaan

maxdavinci — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:48:42 +0000

I had begun to write a review for Desi Boyz even before I watched it. I just had to cross check if it was as I predicted and add some things that I missed. Well I hope I hadn’t watched it for what I had written earlier was far sweeter than what is about to follow. There was a horrible movie called Deuce Bigalow which later spawned an even horrible sequel. Looking back I feel bad for labeling them as horrible because there is a new leader when it comes to horrendous male escort movies. The industry is harsh you see, make a movie on male escorts and that falls under comedy but you do the same with women and that puts you in the line of protests, indecency complaints and mahila mukti activists! Now unless you are the Secretary for the male-escorts-movie-artists-associaion in your city, you are excused but if you still like the movie then I definitely need to hear from you.

I really tried to not hate the movie, so I cheered when mall security guard Akki chases a shoplifter on a segway but lets him go when he finds out the punk has an ailing grandfather, nek dil acha insaan I said. When LSE grad maas-ki-dukaan-abraham proposed to his man-eater GF, I cheered for teh pyaar-mein-paagal-nek-deewana. The Gf in question was long-legs-brain-verbally-challenged-padukone, but I maintain the same coz I wanted to give David Dhawan’s son a fair chance at emulating his illustrious father. Then you tell me that everyone loses jobs due to the recession, which I guess is the flavor of the season, so why not! Even the Dhawans know that just recession-based-unemployment isn’t enough to pick up escorting as a career. Throw in the demanding fiance and her grandiose wedding/honeymoon plans, if that’s not enough we’ll add in an orphaned nephew whom child services are going to put into a foster home. With all the senti aalaap in the background, you’ll even agree to strip at sunday mass in a church! Then tehy tell you that Sanjay Dutt with a handlebar mustache is the greatest man-whore in all of London, if you watch closely you can see him laugh at his own characterization in disbelief!

Now comes the part where I’ll side with the women coz the besharam-duo find their true calling and should really pursue stripping instead of their so-called acting careers. Song over, happily clapping punju aunties in the row behind groan as long-legs-padukone finds out, dumps her fiance while stripping isn’t on child services’ approved-career-options list for guardiansa nd they send the kid to a foster home. OK Now think this through for a minute, you’re unemployed, you’re stripping career is bust, you badlly want to bring back your foance/nephew into you life. What will you do? Break bricks? Sell Pizzas or some other honest-hard-work based attempt to show youa re trying to set things right? That’s where comes the directorial genius, maas-ki-dukaan lives in a trailer outside long-legs-padukone’s house while her father assists in the stalking. The other, oh boy this is gonna be fun, goes back to college to finish his degree! I won’t complain here for the wooomaaan makes her entry as an economics prof. I’ll pretend to be deaf when you tell me that she was Akki’s bacthmate, hopelessly in louww with him while he ignored her for being fat and canoodled with the cheerleaders. Still madly smitten by Akki, she grinds him at a salsa club on the pretext of teaching him economics. Still deaf remember? So when she helps him prepare for a test by dropping a layer of her clothing for every correct answer, I’m happily conveying mouth-waterfalls. There’s a song, more hotness, more grinding and then after Akki manages to graduate, she vanishes into the sea of milk where she probably came form in the first place. The maas-ki-dukaan-LSE-Grad is still camping outside long-leg-padukone’s house harassing her dates and setting new standards for all stalkers. Say all you may, but why find a real job to win over you love when you can stalk the shit out of her!

Assume you somehow manage to overlook everything until this point, you are then struck by a custody case. Now the whole premise of the movie justifies stripping so that the kid doesn’t have to go into a foster home, remember? Despite my love for court-scenes(I’ve watched that sequence in meri jung numerous times), this is hard to digest for they quiz each of Akki’s clientele on the details of their ravenous exploits. This is understand is standard witness interrogation procedure, and since we are talking about bold subjects like male-escorts, gay jokes are commonplace. When the greatest man-whore in London struts into a courtroom, flirts with the judge & hands her a card with a discount, you assume that is standard procedure in british courts! At that point, you don’t care who wins the case, or if the defense counsel is gay or if DesiBoyz the company is accepting applications for man-whores. Only one thing matters and that is…… Chitrangadha Singh is a wooomaaaan!

PS: The movie doesn’t deserve anything more than a 3, but for Ms.SIngh takign her shirt off, I’d give it a 4/10.

PPS: This review could have had just one sentence and still suffice, it’s a boring Sunday evening with nothing on TV so more reason to elucidate, Chitrangadha Singh is a wooomaaaan!

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Review: Rockstar – The travails of an ailing gal

maxdavinci — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:57:40 +0000

This has not been a good year for Hindi cinema, with severely hyped duds or blockbusters that made us groan & shriek in disbelief for the moolah they raked in. Rockstar is backed by an awesome soundtrack by the maestro A.R.Rahman & sadly many can’t or refuse to see beyond that. There have been many movies that have featured brilliant compositions but rarely has that managed to hide the godawful monstrosity behind them. Rockstar is no exception and it seems like Rabir Kapoor was the unfortunate soul to be denied the stuff the whole unit was smoking. I kid you not when I tell you that this was the better entertainment option of the week & precisely what I needed to cleanse the system & get my sanity back. The only redeeming portion in this mindnumbing movie barring the songs, was a 2-minute re-enactment of ‘Yeh Chand So Roshan Chehra’, the best tribute to Shammi Kapoor sahab.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-
“Rahman sir, music is a very integral part of this project. I want you to have a free hand and I’ll position the setpieces around your composition.”

(haiiyo another pyaar toh unka jhoota hain case) “The story is based in Delhi right? Maybe I can write a song for Harzat Nizamuddin, will you like that?”

“Sirjee, no problem sirjee. I will make that an integral part of the movie, people will sing every year in SareGaMaPa’s sufi episode!”

(wastefellow, It will be like fiza where nobody remembers anything but Haji Ali) “Sure sure that will be great, how many songs do you need?”

“Story toh hain nahin ji, I only have an ageing out-of-work ABCD model & an angry Ranbir who is tired of his long hair. So 12-14 songs should do it, I promise you I won’t cut them out like that Delhi-6 fellow.”

(aama da, unnaku enna. story a script a) “Don’t worry Imtiaz bhai, I’ll take care of that. You’ll hear from me in a month.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Dei go find if that Mohit Chauhan fellow is vetti. Tell him I have like 9-10 songs for him in an album. Ask if he will give double-digit discount”

“Sir, but why him? He cannot even play thilana on his harmonica. In low voice he can do humming that’s all. Plus we already gave him life with that Khoon Chala song no?”

“Theriyum da, He is Pritam’s favorite. If we hire him this Imtiaz fellow won’t even realize how inexpensive it was for us to do the album, Full profit only”

“Saar somewhere only you wentoff saar, 10 is not his lucky number it seems, 9 means he is ok nu solaran”
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Ranbir, I need you to look angry. Grow your hair, scream, scowl and kick your legs as the cops drag you”

“yes sir, aaaaarrrggghhh aaaaarrrggghhh”

“Cut cut no no cut it yaar. I need more anger & more kicking, arrey someone show him the climax scene of that Chandramukhi movie yaar”

“But Imtiaz sir, How do I channel my anger?”

“OK I know it, Aditi Rao will now be the journalist. Here, this skinny molly will now be your love interest”

“This reed-ki-dukaan? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ”

” aaaaand Action!”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-
“Ok now listen kiddo, only if you are heartbroken can you be a great artist”

“Fine, what do I need to do, pick up a chick and wait for her to dump me? ”

“Nah kiddo, You get to befriend her, get drunk, watch a dirty movie, drive away to kashmir and then help setup lights and chairs at her wedding”

“Where is the break up? At what point do I drown in sorrow and become a great musician?”

“Patience Kiddo, you’ll get kicked out of the house, take refuge in a dargah and then perform at maata ka jaagaran”

“Still not feeling heartbroken. Also stop calling me kiddo, We aren’t in a Gautam Menon movie”

“Ok look at the girl you are going to fall in love with, now?”

“dimag-ka-shot aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ”

” aaaaand Action!”
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Our next location is Prague, that way we can do justice to ARR’s brilliant soundtrack. Also pakkya remind me to organize concerts all over the country when we get back after the audio release”

” Brilliant so now we get to do shots, pick up whores, visit strip clubs. Ah deja vu, just a lil more posh!”

“Yes you meet her as she is about to see a psychiatrist, sweep her off her feet and be the other-man in her marriage ”

“I get that, but why is she seeing a psychiatrist & will the junta not ask how a small time artist records songs in Prague? ”

“She’s having an affair, you get to sleep with her”

“Palank-tod aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ”

” aaaaand Action!”
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Now you are a star, angry all the time, spit on groupies and shove journos, also you again get to kick your feet and get dragged by cops”

“OK why are lawyers out to sue my ass, why do I keep getting arrested and wasn’t I deported form Prague?”

“Sssshhh here’s your guitar, now go lip sync that sadda haq song”

“Wadda faak, I don’t have any rights of my own, also why are people waving that free tibet flag? Who the hell releases an album called ‘negative’ ?”

“Don’t worry kiddo, you can be posh & play guitar while Shammi Kapoor sahab plays the shenai”

“Wait, why will someone like him want to record with me? The audience is gonna ask you know”

“This girl is back in your life & has terminal bone marrow”

“her again? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ”

” aaaaand Action!”
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Your girl is bedridden, but your very presence makes her sit up, She musters strength to walk down the stairs and into your arms”

“Is this because Rahman composed a ‘Shirdiwale sai baba’ song for this scene? Also how does hanging out with me increase her blood count? ”

” Ok fine I’ll let you scowl and scream at journos again, and then we can shoot my favorite scene ”

“Don’t tel me my music cures her, even KJo can’t sell that shit with SRK ”

“She goes into coma, you are dragged by cops screaming & kicking. Then during your final performance, you see her walk towards you from the crowd but its not her. She has moved to a happy place ”

” Wait how does any of that make sense? Also why this Braveheart type aatma sighting scene? ”

” You got her pregnant & she croaked”

“Maa ki kirkiri aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ”

” aaaaand Action!”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

PS: Give this to Kalpana Lajmi and change liek 20mins of the movie. You will have the story of a free spirited girl, who gets pigeon holed in her marriage, leads an adulterous life with her college friend, contracts a terminal disease and then he re-enters her life to rekindle the feelings. The circle of womanhood is complete with her pregnancy but her body is unable to take it as he slips into coma. Now someone go make that movie!

PPS: I’ll go with 4/10 for this. Deserved only 3, but 1 extra pt for Kun Faya & Sadda haq
(Image Courtesy: rediff)

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The 2010 Dandanakka Awards – Part 2

maxdavinci — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:22:42 +0000

We’ve got to admit that the IPL is killing every one, it’s not just the excitement in the grounds, but also of it with sleaze and scandals that even rocked the parliament. The killer however is the fantasy league I run, which has been draining me. Keeping track of player form, injuries, predicting performance and batting orders and also betting on a player you decide to trump! Oh it’s work alright, especially when you have others pwning you and making it seem like gulping baby foodgulping baby food while it seems like gravel to you. We did promise a part-2 but that was put on hold by an abomination of a movie called Prince that we thoroughly enjoyed. Now that the IPL is done and we have a breather before the T20 world cup resumes, it is high time we kept our end of the bargain and finished this list. We received comments and tweets on our previous post asking for a tamil version of the awards, though we’d love to do so yet we feel that it may come as an overdose. Next year however we shall definitely pay respects to the worst of the south in true DappanKoothu style.

Unsportive movie of the year

Nominees:
Luck
Victory
Dil Bole Hadippa
Blue
The award goes to: The IPL overkill while forcing us to take a mini-sabbatical, also got our grey cells working. Last year saw quite a few movie titles set against a formulaic backdrop with a remote connection to a sport. We had Luck where they paid a bunch of idiots to cheat death(atleast that’s what they were told) and do crazy ass shit like jumping of a plane, swimming with sharks etc. Since they told us that human betting was a sport, it makes them a default entry to our ceremony. Then comes Blue where apart from getting frisky with sharks, they also get on wave runners and circle around women in bikinis. Now I’ve done both, well not the bikini part and hence can vouch for the sport part of it! Dil Bole Hadippa was probably the worst ever adaptation of a girl-playing-in-a-boys-team movie. If the fake Harbhajan look does get your bile juices churning, then the morality speech at the very end will surely make you throw up! The winner however is Victory, which for starters has loser boy Harman Baweja. In addition to the horrendous batting strike rates, cliched scenes of drugs and booze, you also get to see our famed cricketers exhibit their nonexistent acting chops. Did I mention that Brett Lee gets walloped and Murali is cantered around the park?

Unsupportingly supportive actor – Male

Nominees:
The Forest – Agyaat
Aftab Shivdasani – Kambakht Ishq
Mithunda – Chandni Chowk to China
Nana Patekar – Ek
The award goes to: While the lead actors hog the spotlight, the support cast are always short changed. For they are equally responsible in being the ingredients of a disaster soup. Imagine what we would have done if not for the forest in Agyaat, having a predator-like-thing hiding behind dark alleys and killing people would seem really foolish. Not that the movie would have made any sense in a different setting, but they director atleast seemed to imply that the forest was alive. Aftab Shivdasani was never really known for his acting barring that toothpaste-ad smile of his, but getting mauled by a wife who moonlights as a bikini model is sacrilege! He may have been casted opposite Amrita Arora numerous times, but plying second fiddle to khiladi Kumar guarantees instant entry to this list. Oh Nana Patekar might have done the hideous love rap dance in Krantiveer, but is performances always forgave him. No histrionics can however redeem a sleazy cop who sleeps with molls and servants to gain inside info on the accused, and hence he breaks into this list with Ek. The pride of Bengal, however takes the spot, with his totally unforgettable appearance in Chandni Chowk to China. Mithunda is not only reduced to slicing potatoes, but is made to travel all the way to CHina only to get his ass-whupped before being bumped off.

Unsupportingly supportive actor – Female

Nominees:
Dia Mirza – Kurbaan
Lara Dutta – Do knot disturb
Prachi Desai – Life partner
Sherlyn Chopra – Dil Bole Hadippa
The award goes to: How can we forget the lovely women who form an integral part of the support cast. Lara Dutta was abysmal in an already jarring movie, but if her career choices are going to be stealing Govinda from Sushmita Sen in Do Knot Disturb, then there definitely is a problem! If you thought that Prachi Desai was a revelation in Rock On, wait till you see Life Partner. If being reduced to a loud nagging bimbette wasn’t enough, she is also cast along side Tusshar Kapoor! Skimpy outfits are nothing new to Sherlyn Chopra, but you do feel bad for her when the only thing she brings to the table is sidelined and loses out to a bearded sardar boy who is seen wearing salwars at night! Well the winner in this category is Dia Mirza for her blink-you-miss role in Kurbaan where she not only has a lame role, but calls up a friend when she finds out a terror plan being plotted in her living room and not alerting the cops!

Unplayable screenplay of the year

Nominees:
Chandni Chowk to China
Radio
What’s your Rashee
London Dreams
The award goes to: What strikes you in a bad movie are the lines that seem to jump out of the screen. Mouthed by actors with utmost ease, they seem to follow you all the way home and repeatedly slap you in the head as you desperately try to sleep. Himesh was the one who gave us lines like ‘Bhagwan ka screenplay bhi ajeeb hain’ and in Radio he does not disappoint with beauties like ‘genetic cocktail’, ‘Karwachauth lamps’. If they tell you that two women battle each other and throw themselves at Himesh, then you definitely have a problem. A guy meeting a girl from each of the zodiac signs seems a novel idea alright, but when you pepper it with songs, long character sketches, and boring lines, it is begging for trouble. What’s your Rashee tries to hit on many issues and ends up being a damp squib, only wish they had shortened it by an hour. A young boy runs away from home only to surface years later with a rock band at the Wembley, what an awesome concept! Now only if the makers of London Dreams sold some dope along with the tickets, it would have been far easier to look beyond this premise. Nothing and I repeat can come close to Chandni Chowk to China, for you have every possible cringe-worthy cliche rolled in. Identical twins separated at birth in different countries and on opposite sides of the law, ancient Chinese warriors being reborn as aaloo-chat-wallahs, oh we could go on. But when Akshay Kumar boasts of iron fists, forearms, Deepika looks below and goes ‘Oh mere iron man’. If you aren’t dead then you may live to watch the Robert Downey Jr version this summer.

Unbearable actor of the year – Female

Nominees:
Asin – London Dreams
Kareena Kapoor – Kambhakt Ishq
Deepika Padukone – Chandni Chowk to China
Rani Mukherjee – Dil Bole Hadippa
The award goes to: The lovely ladies who grace the screens, careen to the shady dance tunes in wet clothing and deliver traumatic scenes in a giggle. A large number of people flock to the cinema screen just to ogle at gods creation and see them being chased by goons. After a debut like Ghajini, London Dreams may not have been the most intelligent choice for Asin. Not sure if being reduced to a groupie and doing aerobics-type dance with back up dancers, can count her in as a lead actress but that’s what the title credits tell us! If they tell you that Kareena Kapoor is a bikini model in a movie, you’d surely go. But if they tell you that she is also a medical student who is modeling to pay for her tuition, you’d buy the popcorn and go home to eat it in peace. Deepika Padukone makes up for her wooden expressions with that killer smile of hers, but playing a Chinese assassin who goes by the name meow-meow is something that even her looks can’t redeem. If you think I’m harsh then her other avatar is a tele-shopping executive selling cheap gadgets imported from China! You may forgive all but Rani Mukherjee, the queen bee of Yashraj studio productions. In addition to the godzilla-like voice you have her dressed as a sardar scoring a double century in under ten overs while fighting of comeptition form bimbos like Sherlyn Chopra and Rakhi Sawant! If you wish to look beyond this then there is the moral science lecture she delivers in the end that is a cocktail about women in sports and indo-pak relations.

Unbearable actor of the year – Male

Nominees:
Akshay Kumar – Blue
Akshay Kumar – Kambakkht Ishq
Akshay Kumar – 8X10 Tasveer
Akshay Kumar – Chandni Chowk to China
The award goes to: Ah the leading man, the darling of the masses, the voice of the oppressed and the lone warrior against the corrupt system. These only make sense on other blogs but here we are looking at the exact opposite of everything previously stated, and you obviously know that! This year sees a marks a historical change with one man picking up all the five nominee slots,and that is none other than Khiladi Kumar. Molesting unsuspecting sharks in Blue, mercilessly slicing potatoes in Chandni Chowk to China, traveling through pictures in 8X10 Tasveer and walking around with a watch in his stomach in Kambakkht Ishq, Oh he’s done it all! He rode waverunners, scuba dived to find lost treasure, played with the props in the universal studios tour list, perfected the iron forearm technique and danced on the great wall of China! Oh he got to play a variety of roles as well like a village bumpkin, stinky rich millionaire with a thirst for lost treasures, misogynist hollywood stuntman, and a time traveling forest officer. With that highly irritating laugh of his, it is only time before we institute a ‘ab bas karo sijee’ award specially for him!

Disgruntled director of the year

Nominees:
Madhur Bhandarkar- Jail
Ashutosh Gowariker – What’s your Rashee
Priyadarshan – De Dana Dhan
Renzil D’Silva – Kurbaan
The award goes to: I once read in an interview that the director is like the captain of a ship, and he can make a bad script work or let a good one go down the drain. Clearly we are interested in the latter and ones that could have been something else which tanked horribly. Ten years from now Madhur Bhandarkar will still be holding the imaginary social mirror to our faces and stretching every cliche to the limits possible in his movies. Patrons who bought tickets to Jail were given a bound copy of the script so that they could smother themselves if they wish to not live beyond the interval break. Priyadarshan may have jump-started the comic genre that was waning after David Dhawan went on the decline, but if his idea of comedy is two grown up guys chasing a dog in a kitchen and getting flour on their heads, then the signs look ominous. Having now moved to potty jokes and flooding an entire floor of a hotel to have the ensemble cast toss and swim against the current is definitely not funny anymore. I was surprised to learn that Renzil D’Silva was involved in the writing of Rang de Basanti and the soon-to-come Raavan. But behind the camera he shot the poster for Kurbaan first and then filmed a whole movie around it as an excuse. Ashutosh Gowariker makes an entry to this list with his god awful excuse of a movie to quietly dispose the black money made from his earlier projects. Even someone from Cambodia will accept the fact that a movie is marked to tank the moment you sign a powerhouse of talent like Harman Baweja. He no only had a jaded script to deal with, but takes a driller into you head with a snoozefest that spans beyond 3hrs!

Ultra bakwas movie of the year

Nominees:
Chandni Chowk to China
Agyaat
Radio
Kambakkht Ishq
The award goes to: Finally the most coveted award and the reason why this blog keeps getting the odd hits a week. It’s not secret that we love bad movies and this final award lets us pick the worst of the worst. Chandni Chowk to China was bad, and there is nothing that can redeem it. All that hype with Warner Bros, shooting on the great wall, martial arts and mega media promotions was all a sham. No amount of gloss can hide the fact that you had a chinese inspector speak hindi and find his identical twin daughters alive in different countries on opposite sides of the law. Oh then there was a Ganesha manifestation on a potato, which eventually helps in a kung-fu panda moment in the end. On the off-chance that all of the above were a deliberate attempt at pulp we shall spare the noose and turn to RGV’s Agyaat. The idea of a forest coming alive or atleast seeming to have a mind of its own, definitely entices me. I totally get the premise of putting a bunch of people in such a situation and letting their minds get the better of them. Then comes the kicker where you add an abomination/predator-type-thing that goes on a killing spree. What would have been an awesome fare to see the territorial instincts in people force them to eliminate each other, ends up with you waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to jump out of the bushes covered with war paint and brandishing a huge gun. Oh he adds insult to injury by not telling you what was killing all those people, but instead asking you to come back to find out in the sequel! Radio was hated a lot more than it probably deserved, and our heart definitely goes out to it. Frankly there was nothing horrible about the movie, and I mean it. The plot was something that could possibly happen in real life, the songs weren’t jarring, and almost every department was just ok and not bad except for some horrible so-called-cool dialogs. Then why does it make it to this list you may wonder, well because this movie disappointed us more than most. It wasn’t good nor was it bad, there was nothing good or bad worth writing home and hence a colossal waste of 150mins of my life! I don’t mind the dollars spent, but I definitely want that small chunk of my life back, and this is my way of showing it. To the loser go the spoils and Kambakkht Ishq takes them all with a silver spoon. They take an average grossing tamil movie, take away all the funny parts, inflate the budget like a estrogen-fed-chicken, bring in out-of-work American actors, shoot the movie entirely abroad and then try to sell the movie back in the desh. To make matters worse you have a doctor who moonlights as a lingerie supermodel, and a stuntman who lives in a multi-million villa. I shall stop here, lest I shove someone under a guillotine.

PS: We enjoyed bringing you these awards, and promise to do a southern version next year.

(Images courtesy: glamsham)

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Review: Prince – Brain mapping complete

maxdavinci — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:49:58 +0000

Yes I know what you’re thinking. With part-2 of our awards ceremony still in the drafts, we’ve churned out another movie review. Well like Ravi Shastri says, “That’s what the doctor ordered” and hence we have to break the sequence. It is movies like this that makes this blog what it is today and our readership(yes the double digits) enjoys this brand of cinema. Pure unadulterated fun is what they promise, while being unintentionally funny and that also explains the awards ceremony we run each year in their honor. Despite having a heavily packed weekend, with sore limbs due to back to back cricket games, IPL tamasha, working out strategies for the fantasy team and improving my ground shots in tennis we had a stop-press moment. When we learnt that our local multiplexwallah managed to get prints for Prince-It’s Showtime we just had to squeeze 3hrs and go watch it. It may have resulted in sleeping a total of 8hrs in two days together but it was worth every wink lost. For those of you wondering why in Ganesha’s name would anyone forgo food and sleep for a movie. Well it’s not just any movie but a Vivek Oberoi movie, enough said!

Let’s play a game where in you’re an out-of-work actor and a rookie director approaches you with a script. No matter how mind blowing the narrative is, the name Kookie Gulati must definitely set your spidey senses into a tizz. That is however not the case if your name is Vivek Oberoi because you’ve already lost your
mojo
to a buck-hunterlost your mojo to a buck-hunter in public. It is almost impossible to write about the movie, without giving any spoilers away and despite our best efforts we couldn’t resist. Taglines for movies have now become a mandatory trend, and that gives lazy farts to uses taglines like “Its Showtime” for even oddly named action heists like ‘Prince’. Last heard Shammi Kapoor fans were found tearing the posters because they expected to see a digitally mastered version of ‘Muqabla Humse na Karo‘, only to find a heavily tattooed version of Nandana Sen squaring off against a newcomer with high-tech weapons. A special mention for Ms.Sen though, because Dr.Amartya Sen’s biggest achievement is not the Nobel but fathering this voluptuous beauty. Vivek Oberoi has the easiest role, his lack of acting prowess is shielded by the repeated head-holding and falling-on-ground sequences that remind us of what a brilliant actor the BigB was in Majboor.

The movie opens with a shot of the heavily secure swanky multi-storey headquarters of the Diamond Corporation of India(DCOI), which has more gadgetry and security systems than the FBI and CIA put together. Let us put behind us that there are such establishments in the country and also the fact that they offer free tours of their security systems to every dork disguised as a sardar. He then suits up in the gayest leather available and hides in the air-ducts, not before uttering the 2nd best line of the movie, “I’m in and it’s time
to winI’m in and it’s time to win“. After having navigated laser beams, fingerprint mechanisms he uses a laser pen to cut through a window, which in the previous scene was described to be strong enough to resist a powerful bomb blast. That’s not it, for there’s a giant vacuum cleaner that doubles as a periscope and reaches the top floor window from a van outside. You’d assume that he’d just bag the diamonds and then drop them into the van, but in what is the flavor of the season they are vacuumed into the van from the top floor of a multi-storey building. Just so that you can estimate the height of the building, in the very next scene while being chased by the guards, Prince base-jumps of the building and pulls the ripcord of his parachute to land safely on the van. If you’re reading this with your mouth wide open, then hold on to that expression for a while. This was only the opening sequence before the titles take over and Atif Aslam wakes you up from the CGI-induced slumber. “Oh mere khuda” indeed, but only for making such a movie with the craziest indipop album type music video.

This post is already nearing the average word-count but we haven’t even gone near the most interesting parts yet. Prince suddenly wakes up with a bullet lodged in his arm, unable to remember a thing and the only thing worse than his lame expressions is lines like “main kaun hoon, main kahan hoon”. These lines were last heard in a cheesy Pepsi commercial featuring Sachin and movies in the 70s, but prince brings back all those memories and you have new found respect for the era. Prince is now sought after by the CBI and two white collar dons for he posses information about “The coin”. At this point we’re told that “The Coin” was forged in ancient Lanka and it has magical powers because people believe that the coin “Raavan ke rakht se bana hainRaavan ke rakht se bana hain“. So if you’re wondering how Jason Bourne finds the coin and takes it to Mordor to destroy it, then you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Turns out that there are three women vying for his attention claiming to be romantically involved, each with an even interesting back story. What is even more interesting is that each of them is named Maya and has an ulterior motive with the coin in question. Maya-1 sizzles in a club song and we’re told that she is a phony but poor Prince is still smelling her tonsils unaware of this fact. Maya-2 makes an entry with a story of how they are both undercover CBI officers, and their assignment is to nab Sauron Sarang red-handed while handing over the priceless stolen coin. Even this story can be safely ignored along with the unfunny lines of the butler that seem like slapping you in the face till you fake a smile. We were later told that he was the actual dialog writer doing a cameo in the movie, how we wish his death in the climax was for real. But this time again we are are proved correct for Maya-2 is far more sinister than her heavily tattooed yet curvaceous body, only after Prince has taken his tongue out of her throat.

You can easily see the double-cross coming as Maya-2 plants a gun on Vivek’s forehead, but nothing can prepare you for iron-fist. Yes turns out that Sauron Sarang is the love-child of the Terminator T-800 and a bollywood extra. That is the only rational explanation anyone can ever give for his metal fingers. The ensuing fight brings in Maya-3 who has a kickass introduction scene where she rains bullets from machine guns strapped to a hand-glider! This is again followed by yet another song that involves bikinis, bikes and some more jhingjhak music. A note to all CBZ/Karizma lovers who are mostly fans of Vivek Oberoi as well, doing a wheelie while tasting last night’s chicken curry in a girls mouth isn’t probably the best idea and you may want to keep an eye on the road as well. Maya-3 presents us with a killer back story where in, she and Prince collude with the CBI to stage the funkiest robbery ever known to Chetan Bhagat fans. A hologram of two idiots smooching on a bridge is enough reason for a convoy to leave the vehicle they were guarding, while a remote controlled car explodes beneath it to topple the armored vehicle into the water below. Taking cue from Uncle Pai’s science experiments, they cut through the the bullet-proof metal like cardboard underwater.

Nothing in the world prepares you for what happens next, and I kid you not when I say this. Turns out the coin is a facade for carrying a embedded chip developed by the country’s top nanotechnologists, and it enables downloading the entire contents of the human braindownloading the entire contents of the human brain only to replicate them and upload them into another. Prince is strapped to a chair and his brain is mapped using the chip, the progress of which seems to go faster than what it takes winrar to install on a machine. What about those email forwards that tell you that the human brain can store terabytes worth of data, were they lying of is Prince pulling a fast one on you? I found it weird at first but then realized that if you’ve signed a movie like this then surely you only have enough grey matter than can be downloaded under two-minutes. That explains how they did an F-Disk on him and the so-called seizures he gets. The reason I use computer jargon here is because, it is the closest to equating system-crashes and reboots to his brain trying multiple unsuccessful auto-restores. So apart from having a Tony Stark like lair with leather suits, wrist contraptions that shoot mini-harpoons, Prince also has to retrieve the coin in order to barter his brain-mappings. More unintentional comedy ensues with bondesque chases, gunfights and CGI-porn before he finally finds the coin everyone is after. This is where Maya-1 gets bumped off not before the best line the movie is used, “maine uske aankhon mein laalach ka virus scan kar liya tha”. An absurd climax sees Maya-3 decimate Maya-2, while Jason Bourne and Sauron/T-800 engage in a duel on an overturned vehicle going downstream. For a moment you can hear Obe-Van Kenobi squeal to Anakin how he was the chosen one, but this just meanders into a humongous waterfall. Prince rips apart the iron-fist and uses his mini-harpoon to cling onto a nearby chopper, leaving Sarang to fall to his fate. The end credits show Sarang surviving the fall and fatally wounded yet not dead, thus spawning the possibility of a sequel.

I know by now nobody even cares but it’s time to pick up the shattered pieces of our brains around the chair. Since a review warrants a rating, let’s go with 3/10 with a extra star solely for Ms.Sen.

(Image Courtesy: Indiaglitz)

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The 2010 Dandanakka Awards – Part 1

maxdavinci — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:11:25 +0000

Ah late coming but latest coming. Just when you thought that we had forgotten, we come back with what is our highest traffic generating post each year. Having watched close to 70 films last year and being a avid follower of bollywood, we bring you the 4th Annual Dandanakka Awards. Owing to the success of our most popular post last year, we’re back to doing another for this year. Celebrating ineptitude in cinema is how we like to label it, but then it is an arduous task to match these duds alongside each other. The regular awards season is filled with red carpets,
wardrobe malfunctionsred carpets, wardrobe malfunctions, made-up speeches, fashion disasters, and trophys-for-cash. Contrary to popular belief this list isn’t about the B-graders that run in single screens or the sleazy snore-fests that are aimed to titillate the front benches in Jaunpur. This one salutes the big A-listers that come crashing to the weight of their heavy budgets and over hyped promos. Now it’s not often that you see people recognizing the efforts of filmmakers who see their efforts and hours of idiocy turn out to be duds at the box office. While there are other ceremonies that commemorate the best movies of the year, we to the opposite way and look at duds that were smothered on the weekend they released and are now forgotten. There were close to 200 Hindi movies that released in 2009 with only 11-12% passing the litmus test on release day, so that probably gives you an idea of what we’re looking at. We compiled a list of duds early this year as a precursor, and now for the real deal.

Easily forgettable debut of the year – Male

Nominees:
*Jacky Bhagnani – Kal Kissne Dekha
Rannvijay Singh – London Dreams
Abhijeet Sawant – Lottery
Parzan Dastur – Sikandar

The award goes to: We like to start with the newest entrants into filmdom. The leading men of tomorrow for whom teens will suffer severe bouts of hysteria. The men Archies and Hallmark will make a killing by selling posters of but instead will be seen gracing this space in the years to come. A lot of you may remember the cute little Sardar kid counting stars in KKHH, but unfortunately Parzan Dastur learnt that there is more to acting than just counting stars in Sikandar. Who doesn’t know Indian Idol Abhijeet Sawant, but do you also know that the singing talent was a participant on reality dance show Nach Baliye before going a step further and showing us his non-existent acting chops in Lottery? Rannvijay Singh is a stud on the small screen alright and the only reason that the show MTV Roadies is watchable, but peddling drugs in London Dreams isn’t quite the best way to make a debut. You can’t beat Jacky Bhagnani who can see the future, solve complex physics equations, sniff bombs and still manage time to romance the college hottie!

Easily forgettable debut of the year – Female

Nominees:
Vaishali Desai – Kal kissne Dekha
Shruti Haasan – Luck
*Jacqueline Fernandez – Alladin
Giselle Monteiro – Love Aaj Kal

The award goes to: After the boys, it’s time to take a look at the divas who will grace Tollywood for that is where Bollywood discards often head to. The ill-fated have to go north or star in television, commercials and photoshoots. Being related to the great Manmohan Desai isn’t enough and you need more than that if you want to survive the industry, a lesson Vaishali Desai learnt the hard way. Giselle Monteiro might have fooled us all into believing she was a shy punjabi kudi, but then to her credit the role required no talking and just looking coy. Born to extremely talented actors, you’d expect Shruti Haasan to breeze her way through the industry, but this pretty lass doesn’t seem to have the needed luck. There was another import and this one was from the south, but the fate was pretty much the same for Sri Lankan beauty Jacqueline Fernandez and even Aladin’s lamp couldn’t help her cause.

Most painful lyrics of the year

Nominees:
Mangalam Mangalam - Kambakkht Ishq
*Chiggy Wiggy - Blue
Love me Love me – Wanted
Mann ka Radio – Radio

The award goes to: If a song becomes a chart buster, it generally has some very well penned lyrics. The converse isn’t always true yet every year the bar is dropped further as you get to hear shockers. If listening to it being played in every wedding scene wasn’t enough, this year we were treated to a hip-hop version of ‘Main to jantar se hi darta hu, Bas pyaar ka mantar karta hu, om mangalam mangalam’. Not sure if that was more torturous or telling a girl that her parents have opined she love you in, ‘Your mama says you Love Me Papa says you Love Me, O Love Me baby Love Me’. Well I would still take a pass on that one but when Himesh brings you atrocious stuff like, ‘Station Koyi Naya Tune Kar Le zara, FullTu Attitude De De Tu zara’ you can’t help but notice. The kicker however belongs to Kylie Minogue who wants to ‘I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you boy I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you baby’ and that is interspersed with some punjabi balle balle. In the end you have a horrible cocktail, much like mixing payasam with rum or even worse.

Ear splitting music of the year

Nominees:
*Sajid-Wajid – Wanted
Himesh Reshammiya – Radio
Pritam – De Dhana Dhan
Shankar Ehsan Loy – Shortkut

The award goes to: Whenever you have a blockbuster album ringing the cash counters, it most certainly translates to a huge opening for the movie. You also have albums have make you cringe and ask for a refund from the music store, and this list rounds them up. The nasal crooner may have gone under the knife and sing in dual voices, but that doesn’t mean the couldn’t deliver a bland soundtrack. You could say it was so bland that it made a bowl of cerelac seem like tangy samosa chat. We feel that Pritam saves his best for his favorite filmmakers like the Bhatts, how else do you explain an album like Tum Mile for them and the loud De Dhana Dhan for Priyadarshan? Just because SEL are the top composers in the country, doesn’t always mean that they churn out the best of albums. Shortkut was a hash of all discarded tunes put together and a sorry excuse for an album. When you speak of loud jarring music the team that wins it twice in succession are the terrible duo of Sajid-Wajid. Not sure if it is their choice of singers, gawdy loops or atrocious lyrics but they somehow manage to bring out the worst!

Most bakwas song of the year

Nominees:
*Shukran Allah – Kurbaan
Prem ki Naiyya – Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani
Mann ko ati bhave – London Dreams
Baarish kar doon – De Dhan Dhan
S.I.D.H.U – Chandni Chowk to China

The award goes to: I recently learnt that when a song is stuck in your head, the proper term to use is earworm. When a song is repeatedly played on every radio station and makes your ears bleed owing to an overdose, it makes an appearance here. Ajab Prem ki may have been a grosser but that gave them the freedom to play the Prem ki Naiyya on loop over the air. Neeraj Shridhar has never been more irritating than this except when Kailash Kher crooned to S.I.D.H.U hitting the octaves. Now we don’t like being taught how to spell every now and then, especially when it is the same word. Pritam is at it again because Baarish kar Doon sounded like a greedy baniya seeking alms outside a temple, and all you hear is paisa paisa paisa. Whoever said SEL wasn’t capable of dishing out trash has probably eaten two pairs of shoes by now. Just because Mann ko ati bhave was made for Salman Khan, doesn’t mean it had to have eunuch-like sounding backup vocalists. The one that took the cake was the highly irritating Shukran Allah which had almost everything wrong right form the lyrics, setting, actors and tune. The radio overkill just adds to the fact that a mental image of a size-zero kareena pops up in your head every time you listen to it!

I can see past/present award

Nominees:
Kal Kissne Dekha
Aa Dekhe Zara
*8X10 Tasveer
Agyaat

The award goes to: This year we institute a new award for those movies that push the limits of logic while still staying in the real world and not treading the path of fantasy. If you made a mythological and told us that a particular character could see the future, we’d take it happily. When actors with paranormal abilities are paraded as everyday stories, we definitely have a problem. We however chose not to diss them but commemorate them with a category of their own. Agyaat told us that there was this huge savage in the forest that lived under the surface, was stronger than a boulder while not being alien or human. Tey then spank you in the face and force you to watch part-2 if you want to find out what or who it really was. Kal Kisse dekha had the young stud who not only was an ace sportsman, top student, physics whiz, good Samaritan but could all see the future, yes even we laughed at that point! Aa dekhe Zara tried using some logic, and made us believe that a camera not human could tell you how a particular person/thing will look like on a given date. They got past the superhuman abilities, but it was still lame. Akshay Kumar took the inanimate objects telling past/present logic to a higher level in 8X10 Tasveer when he became the polaroid time traveler. Lets just hope you don’t have a knife to your wrists.

Animals in meaningful roles award

Nominees:
Sharks – Blue
Stallions – Kaminey
Moolchandji – De Dhan Dhan
Whatever it was – Agyaat

The award goes to: Over a period of time we have noticed that animals deliver better performances than the main leads. They come in give the shot, take a snack and are out, no hassles, no egos, no fruit juice, no pushy moms and no need for make-up vans! Now Agyaat makes it to this list by default for we aren’t sure if the predator-type-thing was human or alien, hence it shall be counted for the actor category as well. When a dog has a proper name and treated like a member of the family, you are surely in for trouble. SO much that Akshay Kumar kidnaps Moolchandji in De Dhan Dhan for ransom only for the mongrel to create havoc in the kitchen. Splendid performance by the mutt to stay in character despite the ensuing ruckus and Archana Puran Singh screaming her lungs out. We heard rumors that PETA had taken a march against Akshay Kumar who got frisky with a shark in Blue. The poor mammal was cornered in the net and tried its best to escape his lecherous advances, only to have been maathey-pe-kalankofied by the end of the scene. What in Ganesha’s name is with Akshay and animals? The weirdest piece of news comes from the stables of the Bombay Race Course where a few horses were chosen to do a scene with Shahid Kapur in Kaminey. We are told that despite the raw energy exuded by shahid’s bare torso, the stallions resisted his mating tendencies and held character to complete the scene in one shot. To extract such an immaculate performance, Shahid was blinded on the sides thereby reducing the chances of him getting turned on.

PS: Owing to the length of this post and the big awards that follow this post is split into two parts. Let us know if you liked this one, part two is up here!

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Review: Ishqiya – Femme Fatale

maxdavinci — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:03:02 +0000

You don’t have to be a feminist to argue that in Hindi Cinema women often get a raw deal. They are generally reduced to dancing in the Alps in a crepe saree, heckled by goons before the hero takes them to the cleaners, abducted and tied to a chair in the villains lair, or my favorite part rain songs! It’s not very often that you see a woman in badass character, holding the men by their balls. Nor do you see someone chew and spit out one of the biggest names in theater like a piece of sugarcane. Female characters are generally so well etched, and very rarely match up to their male counterparts, forget overpowering them. Now I’m not referring to Vijayshanti-type movies like Tejaswini where she’s an inspector dishing out justice to the womanizers , corrupt politicians and drug lords. Also I don’t wish to send the wrong message across when I mentioned the holding balls part, this isn’t a Zakhmi Aurat type movie tribute either. That reminds me Raj Babbar made a career doing such movies, didn’t he? After all not all movies need to go the Khoon Bhari Maang way, with a bruised and battered heroine, rising from the ashes like a phoenix to take down the ones who caused her pain.

Since I’m on a a roll, let me continue in the same vein. When it comes to movies where women get top billing, no one beats Kalpana Lazmi. it is impossible to fathom the pleasure she manages to extract from inflicting pain upon men in her movies but Chingaari isn’t atleast my idea of femme fatale. Calling someone as a ‘Manoranjak Kutiya‘ or lines such as ‘Noch loon teri aankhen, kaat loon teri jib‘ in return only leaves you with a bad taste in the mouth. We aren’t dealing with that type of femme fatale in Ishqiya, not at least the type where you have a mad war
dance
and mutilate
your adversarymad war dance and mutilate your adversary with a trishul. Ishqiya is more the type of a film where the women hold their own against the men, and not just bludgeon them with the nearest sharp object. Ramya Krishnan held her own against the biggest superstar in the south, in a movie that is still remembered by many for her lines and histrionics. Hell, she even had her own theme music which is incidentally my current ringtone! Well, that’s what I call a performance and she very nearly pwned everyone, in what is clearly one of the strongest written female characters in tamizh cinema. Earlier this week I saw Vidya balan receive an award for best actor(female) from the timeless Rekha. I mentioned to a friend that they looked like maa-beti during our live commentary on gtalk. Now that I think of it, she is the closest when it comes to continuing the legacy of the enigmatic Rekha. Who else in the current roster could pull of a salaam-e-ishq meri jaan or a dil cheez kya hain with elan. This also has nothing to do with the fact that they are both from the south, but only an ode to the raw sensuality that they exhibit with exuberance.

Well Ishqiya is that type of a film where are compelled to sit and analyze each frame as the characters have multiple layers like onions. You have the widow who seems meek and good at heart as she offers to help the duo, only to unravel the mystery of her true agenda in the later reels. She isn’t ashamed to use her charms on two unsuspecting fools for her gains, nor does she twitch when she is ready to go up in flames with her lover and a cylinder. Naseerudin Shah and Arshad warsi play a very jai-veeruish combo of mama-bhanjaa and come across are two very convincing thugs. It might seem a walk in the park for a thespian like Naseerudin Shah to play Khalujaan who is nefarious but longs for affection and is found delving into the past looking at a battered picture of an anonymous woman. Arshad Warsi is a revelation as a conniving horndog and his kohl-lined eyes add to his menacing character. Never has he looked this good apart from his circuit gig, but is eaten alive by the tamancha wielding widow who kicks ass! It’s a toss up between ‘mujhe is haraam zadi se ishq ho gaya hain‘ and ‘tumhara ishq ishq, aur humara ishq sex‘ for the best dialog of the movie, but there are plenty others that make you take notice. Despite being Abhishek Chaubey’s movie, every now and then the frames scream the name Vishal Bhardwaj and its not only the music, but also subtle nuances where references are made to hits like ‘Dhanno ki aankhon mein‘ and ‘Dil mein baji guitar‘. The movie however goes like a volcano in reverse, starts with an eruption and ends in fumes. We give it 6 out of 10 on our DappanKoothu scale.

(Images courtesy: sulekha.com)

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Supremely Sublime Movies of 2009 – Part 2

maxdavinci — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:58:34 +0000

We would like to acknowledge the positive feedback we received for Part-1 of this compilation. Despite getting requests for similar lists in Tamil and Telugu, we chose to refrain because those lists would go into multiple parts. We however promise to make this a regular feature and hope it would serve as a guide to the Dandanakka awards that we run during the awards season. If our stats are accurate then we’ve watched close to 65 of the movies releases for 2009, which still falls short of our target of 75 a year. I however blame it on the strike that rendered the Bollywood summer a tad dry, however Hollywood made up for that with some blockbuster releases. We do wish to give a shout out to Sherlock Holmes, the Guy Ritchie mega-buster as our pick of the year. Some stunning visuals, a tad clichéd maybe but some witty lines and fascinating direction

8X10 Tasveer: Now it’s not often that we see a name like Nagesh Kukunoor in this list, last year was Bombay to Bangkok and this year is Tasveer. Taking advantage of Akshay’s popularity in Canada, the movie was based in Ontario but that atleast gives us some neat visuals. Akshay Kumar once again fails to deliver at the box office, but then it is good to see him doing something different. Nagesh Kukunoor may not have picked the right lead actor but the story is wafer thin with the concept of traveling through time using pictures. Could have worked if not for the outrageous climax and pretty banal storyline. Javed Jaffery as a detective, is a torrid attempt to force some laughs and possibly lines up among the worst supporting gigs of the year. It is surprising to see the names associated with this flick, but the dual role climax just blows you to smithereens. Our guess is that Akshay did this film, only because he could jump of a cliff, no literally!

ShortKut – The Con is On: There was a neat tamil movie called Vellithirai starring the brilliant Prakash Raj and heartthrob Prithviraj Sukumaran, released in 2008. Bollywood decides to remake it, and just like everyother remake they take away everything that is supposed to work, only to replace them with mind-numbing gags. Despite our fondness for the svelte Amrita Rao, the movie was a groaner and counting the follicles on Akshay Khanna’s receding hairline would have been a lot more engrossing. Arshad Warsi desperately tries to resuscitate this groaner, but the post-Munnabhai circuit hangover clearly shows. It shows that Bollywood can not only come up with an interesting script, they have issues adapting existing blockbusters.

Victory: Generally there’s not much that can go wrong with movies with a sports theme. They are either underdog stories or inspirational accounts of rags to riches. In either case they ensure an audience connect and box office success. Victory does neither and even a tired looking Amrita Rao fails to evoke any interest. Brett Lee looks like a greek god on screen and may have secured a post-retirement career but you do feel for Stuart Clark who gets cantered for 36 runs in an over by Harman. A small-town boy makes it to the Indian team, only to get sucked up by the glitz, glamour and hide his injury. Dropped following public humiliation, only to return with dedication and bludgeon the likes of Murali et all for 20 runs per over in the world cup. A disappointing movie despite cameos form popular cricketers and a brilliant title sequence, and Harman Baweja makes it to this list two years in a row [Read Review]

Life Partner: Rumi Jaffery made an entry into this list last year with the atrocious ‘God tussi great ho’, and now this! There’s only one funny line in the whole movie and bollywood seems to be setting a record of sorts with contorted climax scenes. Priyadarshan is the only one who can pull of mad climax scenes with tons of actors, and even seems to be losing his flair. Govinda is unconvincing as a chick-magnet in a role tailor made for Salman Khan. Who in the world takes advice on love/marriage from a divorce lawyer who makes a majority of his earning man-whoring for his female clients? Since when did we expect movies with Fardeen Khan to work at the box office? Oh, wait doesn’t this movie also have Tusshar Appam Kapoor as well, ha now you’re wondering why we even watch shit like this!

Kurbaan: Kurbaan, the latest offering in the terrorism genre is another sorry attempt to play to the foreign audiences and milk the sentiments of muslim extremists and justify their acts. The whole movie was canned on the pretext of a money-shot that included a backless beauty and a bullet-ridden chest. Someone got the idea of a great promotional poster, something that has never been tried before and decided toe weave a movie around it. So what happens when you build a movie around an advertising gimmick to get you some eyeballs? A sorry tale of deceit, zombie jihadis, a hot making out scene, weird logic and some pretty ordinary music. Hard to believe that it came from the pen of the person who co-wrote RDB. The tagline suggests that it is a love story, but you hardly see any love, unless you count the making out scene as love. [Read Review]

De dana dan: Having to endure over two hours of Priyadarshan’s latest was pretty tough especially when it has just over 20mins of genuine laughs. A rather drab first half is pretty unbearable for it does nothing to the plot and is horrifyingly slow. The second half has over 30 characters in a hotel with mistaken identities and the ensuing chaos. Flooding an entire hotel might not be the most clever ideas for a big finale. There is also a deluge of actors on screen and you give up counting after a while. In what seems like the royal rumble of characters, there seems to be no clear winner with everyone giving washed up performances. Good performances by Johnny Lever, Paresh Rawal and few others, while the women just wear tight garments, pout and try to look pretty. If not for Katrina bringing back rain songs into fashion, this would have been a total no-show.

Radio: Himesh yet again dons the hat of an actor and chooses to face the camera only to be met with the same fate. In a somewhat interesting plot broken into chapters, the lines and bad acting pull it into the depths of flopistan. Himesh plays Pied Piper in an imaginary universe where pheromones travel through radio waves. There is no other way you can justify the events in a movie where a police commissioner takes in a guy into his family, who asks his daughter to fake being in a relationship. With a new language being invented where words like ‘Fultoo attitude’ and ‘genetic cocktail’ are used to describe the woman you love, there definitely are some problems here. Their idea of resolving problems and fights of all sorts is strangely to break plates. How we wish the plates were not broken on the floor but on Himes’ head instead! [Read Review]

Aa Dekhen Zara: It’s no secret that we love Bipasha basu and her movies are a must watch irrespective of who else is in it. It always doesn’t turn out fine, like this one for example. There have been dozens of movies where the protagonist either has the ability or finds a gadget that enables him/her to look into the future. A camera that reveals pictures of future events is surely an interesting concept, but then a banal plotline makes it a boring ride. Given the premise, handling the events around it becomes critical for future gazing alone will not sell a movie. This is precisely where the movie sinks while mediocre performances and a forgettable soundtrack don’t help either. If only the sultry Ms.Basu made better career choices, we’d not have to sit through duds like these.

Kal kissne dekha: There haven’t been many debuts that have gone worse especially when two star kids are involved. A college geek who can see the future, ends up outwitting a terror outfit, while romancing the college hottie and teaching the snobs a lesson. People ought to know that there is more to colleges than what you see inK3G and Mohobattein. Snooty girls chewing gum and humiliating small-town boys with a heart of gold doesn’t really happen anywhere. Also if you’ve had a premonition that there’s going to be a terrorist attack, you would normally alert the authorities. Rishi Kapoor reminds you of the essence of a good wig, more so when you can see the original hair peeking from below. Since when did college professors have enough equipment in their labs to build nuclear weapons and bombs that could take out a city? We just love bad debuts and this one tops the list! [Read Review]

Ek – The power of one: For how long are we supposed to see Bobby Deol go out and do the same thing where he sports dark glasses and shoots people. He probably doesn’t even listen to the story forget the script. It must be quite easy to wear the same jaded expression, glasses to hide the droopy eyes from last nights hangover and just go trigger crazy. They only have to paint a few explosions, songs and some characters around him and viola, you have a movie! While the original in Telugu had some great lines, slick camera work and vibrant colors, the Hindi version adopts everything but the good parts. Nana Patekar as a sleazy yet honest cop, who doesn’t even spare servant maids is a huge let down. Shriya is good but you only get to see her for a total of 20 mins. With so many bullets flying around, you only hope one of them hits Bobby in the heart. That is your only hope because the movies groans for over two hours.

PS: We enjoyed bringing this list, while you may not share the same enthusiasm reading it. We hope to do the same next year and if things go as wished, we may have loads of groaners!

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Supremely Sublime Movies of 2009 – Part 1

maxdavinci — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:05:51 +0000

Another year crawls to an end and that means it is time we looked back at the fruits, our beloved Hindi cinema gave us. With everyone compiling their own lists of the best movies of the year and arguing over their choices, we prefer to ignore them. We aren’t going to squabble over why Kaminey was a better movie than Wake up Sid, or why Paa ought to beat Delhi-6. Instead we prefer to focus on the back of the line and movies that don’t quite get the respect they deserve. While people love to rave about the best movies, the rest are often ignored. Here at DappanKoothu we love all movies both good and bad across the three major movie industries in the country. If anyone of you wishes to accuse us of being partial towards the Tamil, Telugu and Hindi industries, then you are free to do so. There may be good mallu and bong films that win those national awards, but then they don’t churn out 200+ movies a year and none of their budgets run into crores. We shall therefore rephrase our previous statement, at DappanKoothu we pander to the big budget film industries for their wholesome masala entertainment!

Luck: Human betting makes for an interesting concept but when you fail to wrap a story around it and instead put together a mishmash of poorly executed stunts, we have a problem. The lovely Shruthi Haasan may have got the looks from her mother, but sadly fails to inherit acting chops form her dad. Sanjay Dutt looks jaded with his paunch and MithunDa was probably smoking something when he signed the dotted line. If only the sharks accounted for more than one casualty, the movie atleast would have been a lot shorter. We wonder who selects the scripts for Imran Khan, for he’s signing one dud too many. On second thought if in the very first scene, if Sanjay Dutt had not survived the stunt on the rail tracks the movie wouldn’t have lasted more than 5mins! Compounded to that you have some pretty substandard music and the worst recipe for the debut of a star kid. Well it could atleast go down as the best way not to make an action movie or a debut launch vehicle!

Main aur Mrs Khanna: Finally we have a movie that is hit by the recession, or atleast the characters were supposed to be hit. So lets see how this begins, you have a happy couple in Australia when suddenly things go bad in economy. So what does the adarsh pati of bollywood do?, well decides to goto Singapore while packing his wifey away to Delhi. It might still not seem crazy yet, but then he prefers to tell her only at the airport when their flights departs minutes from each other! She chooses to stay back in Australia, and then enters stage 6 our real hero! You are now treated to two hours of Sohail khan trying to woo a married woman. Yes the poster unfortunately doesn’t tell you that, nor do the promos. Salaman khan once again returns in the climax to create some dharam sankat in this extended guest role. BappiDa as a store owner is the only saving grace in his special appearance. If only the producers were hit by the recession, this movie would have never been made!

London Dreams: It’s hard to keep a straight face when someone tells you that Ajay Devgan and Salman Khan play rockstars in a movie. Actually it is impossible to say that and then not have people in splits. You therefor have a movie that ought to have been made 10 years ago, for the theme of a friend envying another’s talent and fame is done to death and so passe. Add to this Ajay Devgan inflicting torture upon himself, for thinking about a woman and getting distracted from his dream! This self-flagellation may seem to remind you of the opus dei, But that atleast was a bunch of fanatics. Salman Khan yet again sleep walks in the village bumpkin with a heart as pure as glacier water, who put friendship ahead of sarson ka saag. To top it all up their biggest sin was to cast Asin as a traditional south indian girl, who’s idea of freedom is to prance on stage behind the singers.

Agyaat: RGV the eccentric genius never ceases to amaze, at times with brilliant pieces and the rest with duds like this. We guess he was on a picnic as a child when he was spooked by the forest when he went to pee. Guess what happened when he returned to the forest 25yrs later to find his lost corriander chutney sandwich, someone was again spooked by the rustling bushes! Bang, that’s when he decides to put a few discards, a failed hero from teh south and a one-time muse in the same forest and a moving camera behind them. Once you’ve had enough shots of the posterior of a particular someone under a waterfall, you then go on thinking of ways to kill people. If people ramming their necks into trees or falling onto rocks wasn’t cool enough, RGV even introduces a non-terrestrial intelligent predator to finish off people. However since it is a low-budget flick, we don’t have enough funds for the special effects and so we film the killing scenes form the eyes of our killer! Just when you think the numb feeling in your head is going to end, they hit you with a ‘Part 2 coming soon’ message just when you expect to uncover the identity of our killer!

Whats Your Rashee?: We have been a fan of both the previous Ashutosh Gowariker movies until this one. Infact they rank really high on our scale with high 8′s out of 10, and hence following the balance of averages that hits Tendulkar every alternate series, we have an abysmal low here. It’s not like that we hate Harman Baweja or make it our mission to diss every movie he is in. It is however hard not to go bonkers over his choice of scripts, given the dearth of talent on our hands. He makes the fact evident, that looks and a good pair of feet ain’t good enough to see you through a movie. The premise isn’t quite bad with a boy choosing from twelve girls, each belonging to a different zodiac sign. Though slightly chauvinistic, it still holds some promise if properly executed. That is when you are subjected to close to four hours of what feels like someone lulling you to sleep with a sledgehammer. There is however no excuse for Priyanka Chopra, the dame makes the same mistake twelve times over!

Chandni Chowk To China: What can you probably say about Nikhil Advani without being visceral? Poor treatment of a wafer thin plot lands Nikhil Advani with yet another dud, this time for the Sippys. The movie is neither simple and carry a message like Kung Fu Panda, not is it funny like a martial arts spoof like the cult Kung Fu Hustle. Instead what you get is a bland concotion of twins separated by birth, lord ganesha appearing as a potato and people in China speaking Hindi. The effervescent Akshay Kumar nor the stunning Deepika Padukone can save this mad caper. Shot in some stunning locales like the great wall of China, CC2C falls flat for being slapstick and boring. Oh it also carries probably the most cringe worthy dialogue of the year, when Akshay learns the iron forearm technique. All body parts iron except one, oh mere iron man! Yes you can never watch the Robert Downey Jr. version ever again!

Jail: Ever wondered what we would do without Madhur Bhandarkar holding a mirror to society? Imagine how horrible a place the world would be if not for him and his thought provoking and award winning movies. Okay who are we trying to kid here, we just hate him to our guts and every piece of horse crap he makes under the pretext of meaningful cinema! First it was bar girls, then office sluts, then the sleaze in the ramp and now finally prison bars. This is how he goes about making his films, he first picks an area worth exploiting. Then he makes a list of every possible cliche he could think of and then extrapolates them beyond levels where even Ekta Kapoor would not dare to go. So you have illegal drug possession, hostile living conditions, worm infested food, nude humiliation, self pleasuring and if that wasn’t gross enough you have two men going at each other form the rear. With these beautiful images in your mind it is very hard to get a sound sleep fro a couple of nights, but it soon wears of with the promise that Mr.Bhandarkar will be back again next year!

Blue: It’s not often that you have a movie sink without trace despite boasting of a soundtrack composed by A.R.Rahman. Infact we feel really bad for the movie, especially given the fact that it could have been a lot more better. How else do you connect bikers in hongkong/singapore, a has-been Australian popstar, and a yacht in the Caribbean? Now it may seem thaaaat we are going a little cuckoo, but then that is just the tip of the iceberg. Shot in superb locales, breath taking underwater photography, fantastic title sequence and plenty of style to go with the A-class names. Well the only thing missing was a couple of sharks doing chiggy-wiggy with each other underwater and a PLOT! They spent so much on the music, locales, costumes, stars and everything that they forgot that a movie needs a story. Sad Sad Sad!

Kambakkht Ishq: It baffles me why one would remake an average Tamil grosser into Hindi. A straight rip-off would have probably fared better,but then how could bollywood be happy with just that? So to exhibit the weight of our purse-strings, we bring in one-time hollywood wonders, and a couple of forgotten stars. Topping that would be shooting scenes at the universal studios guided tour and weave a story around a stuntman and a aspiring doctor. Well it doesn’t seem weird yet, that is because a doctor is bland and no glamorous, so they just write in the part where she moonlights as a lingerie supermodel! Lets just pepper this with tags of man-hater and woman-hater as the two most brilliant character sketches of the year. The cherry on the icing ends up being a weird watch that chimes a wedding mantra and forgetting it in the stomach of a patient. You can reach for the dispirin on the kitchen table as you read this but for the ones watching, No mangalam whatsoever! [Read Review]

Do Knot Disturb: If David Dhawan were to re-release his gems from the nineties, I’m sure they’d still take a better opening that this load of crap. Who in the world would leave a wife that looks like Sushmita Sen for another, even if that means Lara Dutta! Mistaken identities are definitely funny, but when you are repeatedly hit on the head till you laugh, isn’t quite pleasant. It is getting exceedingly difficult to watch Rajpal Yadav do the same thing again and again till the point he gets beat up like a church bell. The less we speak about the cast, the better it probably is for we have a long list to cover. With a hackneyed plot and forced laughs Do Knot Disturb is tied in its own knots. It hurts when comedies fail to make you laugh even artificially, and we’re lucky that we didn’t have to pay to watch this one!

Dil Bole Hadippa: It is a fact that we love sport-based movies where the underdog team triumphs against all odds. We don’t hate Rani Mukherjee despite her dinosaur voice, nor do we have a personal agenda against the YashRaj banner. Rani Mukherjee and Shahid Kapur come together for the second cricket-based film of the year and it is pretty disastrous as well. In what was supposed to be a remake/inspired version of ‘She’s the man‘, Rani Mukherjee makes it to a local cricket team disguised as a boy/bhajji impersonator. Not quite a problem, but then she romances the team captain at night while trying to fend off a sultry Sherlyn Chopra. However when you tell us that the last batting pair scores 165 runs in under 10 overs, it get a bit too hard to believe. That’s not all the unbelievable shit that goes on, and you have to watch it to even believe it! [Read Review]

PS: Owing to the length of this post, we’re splitting it into two parts. The mayhem continues in Part-2.

(Images courtesy: glamsham.com)

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Review: 3 Idiots – You are the fourth

maxdavinci — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 03:06:29 +0000

Well, you read it right and I did infact call you all idiots. Who else in the world would be insane enough to go watch a movie that claims its protagonists to be idiots.A friend argued with me that the movie was going to be a dramatic sketch about kids suffering from acute idiocy and how they cope up with everyday life. She also went ahead to add that it would be a poignant and touching tale that forces you to yank out your handkerchiefs! I don’t blame her for after all Indian cinema has always been fascinated with medical conditions right form the iconic lymphosarcoma of the intestine to the more recent ones like dyslexia and progeria. Apart from that she had a great sparkling voice which then gives her the license to go on and on without being interrupted! Thankfully for me and unfortunately for her, the movie turned out to be diametrically opposite to that she had expected. One more dramatic, self-pitying, senti-weep-fest and I was ready to shoot someone. We’ve had too many this year, while some have unintentionally been tear-jerkers for their high levels of absurdity. It was hence even more important that last big release of the year be atleast mildly funny.

Movies are best enjoyed when you are either awed by the visuals, left laughing till you sides hurt, fall in love with the concept, or moved to tears by the poignant plot. There is however another category that is not often touched and that is when you feel a connect between you and a character on screen. When that happens, you can see yourself on screen and imagine what you would do in a similar situation. You are then tele-ported down memory lane as you reprise the events soaked in nostalgia. Do not watch this movie if you have never been in a mega pressure situation cramming for a competitive exam. If you have never questioned the value of the education you receive, without its practicality, then this will all seem fairy-taleish. If you’ve seen friends cave in, to the pressures of the heavily loaded curriculum and giving in to the rat-race by paying with ones life. Ever known someone who found hugging death, a lot more soothing than survive the endless rigmarole of percentages to the decimal? Ever seen the words jump out of your textbooks and run around the room, having stared at them for over14hrs a day? Ever been humiliated by your peers in front of everyone in your first month of college? Ever felt that you were destined to do other things, but were being bound by the system that kept shoving you into mediocrity? If your answer is in the negative for a majority of the above, then you are better off not watching the movie.

The movie however refuses to come out from behind the
shadow
of the
MunnaBhai seriesbehind the shadow of the MunnaBhai series. Agreed that the makers are the same, yet that doesn’t give you the excuse to leave major imprints. It’s like after a night of heavy booze, the morning after along with the hangover your breath smells everything you drank for the whole day! You therefore have semi-paralyzed patients who respond to humor and affection, magical catchphrases that miraculously seem to make people feel better, and civilians performing extremely complex medical procedures. Add to that smart kids who put their education to good use with some indigenous inventions. Luckily for use the humor isn’t compromised one bit, and the gags keep coming like ‘Draupadi’s akshaypatram in the Mahabharata‘. They however used a few rehashed jokes and that at times seems stale. We are big fans of comedy, and that includes peeing on a livewire, or even farting inappropriately. Only if a few cringe worthy scenes had been avoided for more breathtaking shots of ladakh with azure waters, the movie would have scored a lot more. On the DappanKoothu scale, we score it at 7/10 and do watch it if possible!

(Images Courtesy: oneindia.com, glamsham.com)

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